


Here Comes the Rain Again

by arcadevia



Series: Comfort Fics [5]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Private School, Betrayal, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Lance (Voltron) Has Self-Esteem Issues, M/M, Past Heartbreak, Trust Issues, klance is at the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:09:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24411832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arcadevia/pseuds/arcadevia
Summary: lt starts with making a friend.The raw excitement is a burst comparable to a sun’s flare, with a scorching and brazen air of unadulterated enthusiasm for what’s to come, and what can be left behind. It’s new, he feels his past misfortune can crumble after each step like a slowly collapsing stone bridge. His optimism paints a garden of potential on the other side, where he can catch the mistakes he made from his last fallouts to avoid tripping over rock and collapsing into the gnarled, unforgiving limbs of a rose bush.Life is good. He won’t mess up.Or: Lance tries maintaining his friendships, but can’t seem to quit being a bother.
Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron), Past Lance/OC
Series: Comfort Fics [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2065521
Comments: 13
Kudos: 178
Collections: Just some pretty nice fics





	Here Comes the Rain Again

lt starts with making a friend.

The raw excitement is a burst comparable to a sun’s flare, with a scorching and brazen air of unadulterated enthusiasm for what’s to come, and what can be left behind. It’s new, he feels his past misfortune can crumble after each step like a slowly collapsing stone bridge. His optimism paints a garden of potential on the other side, where he can catch the mistakes he made from his last fallouts to avoid tripping over rock and collapsing into the gnarled, unforgiving limbs of a rose bush.

Life is good. He won’t mess up.

He does. Painfully early and already do his classmates mutter those golden words: _“annoying”, “obnoxious”, “dramatic”_ behind the cuffs of their crisp white uniforms. His smile eventually turns crooked with every remark, like it’s curve has turned asymmetric from something that’s carved an uncomfortable nook inside his cheek.

The tinge of pain he feels from his overbearing effort at constantly tugging up that wavering corner has begun to take a toll on him. Mama says he _“just seems off”_ and perhaps she catches on before he’s even realized it himself. But his _“I’m just tired”_ s always follow each _“Are you alright, mijo?”_ s and evening though his mom knows better, she decides not to question it anyway.

Emanuel enters his life the same way cold ocean water tickles his toes just past seafoam and he can’t wait for what’s to come, which is the refreshing embrace of something that soaks past his skin and into his heart. He’s ached for friendship the same way he aches for home, and if he tries his best then perhaps the two will fuse together again, just as they were when he was younger and his life wasn’t so complicated.

Together, they maneuver through a maze of hallways that adorn sophisticated portraits and glossy wooden lining. But their school’s thick facade still can’t rid the stench of it’s students’ haughty gossip and petty complaining about a wealthy life Lance would give anything to have. Nonetheless, Emanuel tells him it’s not as great as it seems, and for some reason the claim is convincing to Lance when it slips from a pair of pretty lips and a friendly lifted brow.

Lance doesn’t quite realize how incomparably _thorough_ he tells of his personal upbringing and passionate interests until Rachel hooks her chin over his shoulder, just beside his sweaty collar, and says _“writing some poor kid another essay about yourself?”_ after taking a shameless peek at his phone’s bright screen.

He knows his sister had been throwing out what meant to be a harmless tease, poking at his swelled balloon of a secure self image just for the sake of being an ass, but for some reason he dwells on it for what should be an unnecessarily long amount of time.

Yet he lays there on his bed, scrolling up through past messages and seeing that every onslaught of blabbering earns only a couple short remarks from Emanuel, and something just doesn’t seem right.

His balloon begins to deflate.

But maybe his friend is just different, right? Not everyone sheds that layer of timidness at the idea of bubbling social energy. And it’s okay, because Lance still finds that reassuring air of friendliness. It’s in the way Emanuel slides a hand over his own mouth to keep from bursting into laughter and consequently revealing their exchange of ridiculous notes during class.

Lance unfolds the note— _“dude you’re such an idiot”_ —but he doesn’t ignore the small heart that shys just beside the ripped edge of their small slip of paper. He sends Emanuel a cheeky smile that lifts from his noiseless chuckle, then pockets the paper after making a couple folds just before their exam begins.

By question two he realizes there’s no snag on one side of his smile, and maybe everything will actually be alright.

There’s something that flares at the pit of his stomach the same way a grand and intricately sculpted fountain would spray pure water from its center piece. It’s a charming sight that’s easy on the eyes when he doesn’t see the same luxurious sights at home. Lance stupidly thinks the secure hands holding each side of his face while Emanuel kisses him with just enough vigor are the same kind of charming.

He clutches onto his friend’s forearms so as not to drown in the bowl of such a breathtaking fountain, then curls his lips back in just the way he believed that mouth could take.

And Emanuel did take. He took until their lips were shiny and a ring of red tinged just around the edges from their heated instincts. He took until the fountain water ran dry, and Lance snapped back to the reality of being crammed in a bathroom stall just before they heard the door swing open on the other side.

Lance assumed they’d laugh about it later on, and maybe it would flower into something newer and more vibrant, perhaps roses with more plush petals and less prickly thorns. But curiously, his prompts were dodged and the incident remained unspoken of from then on.

Everyday he waits for it, being left behind, but responds with his dreadful “essays” all the same because when he loves, he does it in the way things are destined to fall apart. The effort he gives puts normality to shame and it’s not something to be proud of when his head will surely hit the deep end’s water before his toes could’ve done in a more gentle approach. _Shut up_ , he thinks, _if I just shut up for once then he’ll still like me_.

 _“Did you get the email too?”_ Emanuel asked him one day. _“The one for that campus tour. I’ll go if you go.”_

Lance could barely mask his breath of relief. He must’ve pulled it off; he’s toned it down, finally for once he’s not being too much.

Though in reality, it was exhausting. And his balloon of self security had been deflating since the day it’d been pricked.

_**Me:** hey are you still planning on going to that thing? _

**_Delivered • 2h_ **

Maybe he’s just busy.

**_Delivered • 6h_ **

He could have something going on. Maybe caught up in another argument with his parents, that tends to happen.

**_Delivered • 1d_ **

Probably got his phone taken away or something.

**_Delivered • 3d_ **

Lance knew something was wrong. His efforts had somehow splintered and those obnoxious habits of being too much in one place and not enough in the other had finally made Emanuel’s tolerance wither.

**_Delivered • 1w_ **

That’s all he ever was. Something to tolerate and barely a kid that needed a friend because really, he talks enough for two and that’s enough when it comes to a disruption like him. There’s nothing to mourn on the other end besides apparently wasted time.

**_Delivered • 2w_ **

Emanuel flaunts the campus tour in a post with a pair of snobby, crisp collared guys practically attached to him at the hip. They sport the kind of loud mouths that could’ve been stuffed with a boot to expulsion had their parents not made such _generous_ donations to their private school. Lance had been convinced he was at least something considerably better, going by those shameless passed notes that talked shit about the very two of them. Apparently, Emanuel has been convinced otherwise.

And sadly, Lance wouldn’t have needed much convincing at all.

**_Opened • 4w_ **

  
  


The person he shares a dorm room with turns out to be some guy named Keith. He’s got choppy hair that may as well have been cut by shears, a brow piercing that barely glints underneath his curtain of bangs, and slim muscle that Lance hadn’t discovered until the guy finally ditched a sweatshirt for once.

He’s hot. And for that reason, Lance doesn’t wanna fuck this up, along with the fact that he can’t afford ruining the process of working through their pretty opposite routines.

A couple months into solidarity and even dancing over into what feels like friendship, they cram side by side on Keith’s definitely too small bed, heads giddy and hearts spinning— or is it the other way around?

Well they’re drunk. It’s a cheap celebration for Keith’s birthday and basically one last hurrah Lance has dragged him into because sure, Keith may not like parties but he should be appreciated somehow.

“Nonono go there,” Lance clumsily slurs as he waggles a finger over the small phone screen while Keith can’t seem to know right from left. It’s something about a funny video, a memory sparked by whatever Keith had said seconds ago but now it’s starting to flutter away from him.

He presses on the messages app instead and it expands into Keith’s latest conversation, with a text that takes up almost his entire screen. The contact name has a little teddy bear emoji next to it, which had become Lance’s trademark somehow from a distant inside joke that left Keith’s elbow bruised from falling off his bed in a fit of uncontrollable laughter.

**Lance 🧸**

**Today 12:00 AM**

keith, mister mullet man, reject gerard way, gay space ranger- i am sitting here watching you sleep in the most non-creepy way possible, mostly because this room is small and there’s barely anything else to look at. plus you talk in your sleep. something about a nerf gun and an oven, you’ll have to tell me abt it if you remember. anyway, im here to say happy birthday. wow, congrats on turning nine years old! nah i’m joking (maybe). anyway, just wanted to say you kinda sorta mean a lot to me and i’ll say it since it’s a special day. even though you’re an asshole sometimes, it’s pretty easy to solve since apparently all you need is candy or something. i’ll also hold off on shaving your head in your sleep, same reason as before.

what i’m trying to say is happy birthday. you’re loved and all that other fun stuff. i’ve probably annoyed you enough so when you wake up and read this just pretend you never saw it so it’s less embarrassing for me :) <3

**Today 9:32 PM**

Thank you, Lance.

That means a lot to me.

(And you’re an asshole too :))

“Aw man ‘m sorry bout all that,” Lance mutters. His hand falls in defeat, splayed right over the center of Keith’s chest that rises and falls to a slow beat.

He feels Keith’s head shift, has to pull back his own since they were once pressed together from lack of space. It’s just enough to see Keith’s features sharpen and that small sheen of his piercing from his phone’s lit screen. He’s unfairly attractive in a way that’s turned more distinct since they first met. His roommate isn’t a hot stranger anymore, he’s… well, he’s _Keith_. And that in itself has become even more attractive for some reason.

“Whadyou mean?” Keith asks with his mouth pulls down in a small and quizzical pout. Lance almost takes it back but—

“That was prolly like… kinda annoying ‘r somethin…” he mumbles while his fingers betray his claim and curl into the fabric of Keith’s shirt as an instinctive way to say _please don’t go_.

His roommate, his _friend_ , stares at him— all over the plains of Lance’s face, like he’s some sort of complex painting Keith can’t quite figure out. It’s in the way his thick brows furrow and his lips droop open like a ghost of being offended. “I…” he starts, settles back on Lance’s worried eyes and even lifts a hand to loosely clasp the one on his chest. “I like being annoyed. It makes me feel like I matter.”

“Oh,” Lance says.

He thinks of a tangled string of all his past apologies, his tapering hope with each hour or day he’s left without a response and immediately would think _please, not this again_ . It’s miserable. _I don’t know what I did wrong; I don’t know how to fix this; he never told me; I wish I could just sh—_

 _“Talk to me,”_ Keith would say to him after a dreadful day. Because apparently his constant remedy for it takes form in a habit of listening to Lance’s outrageous stories or impromptu rants. A lot of inside jokes, a lot of reasons Lance shouldn’t doubt himself but he only realizes it just now.

When he bows his head down to conceal a growing smile, Keith’s cheek is plush against the tip of Lance’s nose, like a rose petal. But Lance doesn’t want the garden across the bridge anymore. He likes this instead.

**Author's Note:**

> exclusive fics on [my instagram](https://instagram.com/arcadevia?igshid=1bqu2rmbht9gq)
> 
> Trust the possibility that it wasn’t your fault for being left behind, someone is going to prove that to you.


End file.
